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AN ADDRESS 



DELITEaEE BEFORE THE 



AMESICAN WHIG AND CLIOSOPHIC SOCIETIES 



OF THE 



COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY 



SEPTEMBER 2 6, 1837. 



VI SAMUEL Lfs01 



BY SAMUEL L7 SOUTHARD, LL. D. 



../ 



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■^ PRINCETON: 






PRINTED BY ROBERT E. HORNOR, 

1837. 



EXTRACT FROM THE MINUTES OF THE CLIOSOPHIC SOCIETY 

SEPTEMBER 27th, 1837. 

Resolved, That a committee be appointed to present the thanks of the 
Society to the Hon. Samuel L. Southard, for the learned and eloquent 
address delivered by him yesterday ; and that he be requested to furnish a 
copy of the same for publication. 

PROF. MACLEAN, 7 ^ 

Committee. 



PROF. A. B. DOD 



!'] 



EXTRACT FROM THE MINUTES OF THE AMERICAN WHIG SO- 
CIETY, SEPTEMBER 27th, 1837. 

Resolved, That a committee be appointed to offer the thanks of the 
Society to the Hon. Samuel L. Southard, for the learned and eloquent 
address delivered by him yesterday ; and to request a copy of the same for 
publication. 

RICHARD S. FIELD, Esa. ') 

REV. DR. BRECKINRIDGE, C Committee. 

WM. C.H. BROWN, Esa. S 



ADDRESS. 



You have called me from the discharge of other duties to 
address you. The attempt to comply with your request, has 
renewed my impression of the ties by which I am bound to 
this institution ; and my obligations to promote the interests of 
those who, like yourselves, are connected with it. The retro- 
spect of years which are past, and the anticipation of years 
which are to come, conspire to make me feel, that while I am 
a brother, addressing brothers in literature and friendship, I 
have other bonds to be a faithful counsellor to the younger 
members of these Societies. Here, more than thirty years 
ao^o, I received an important part of my youthful training. I 
have never been able to recur to the employments which then 
occupied me — to the friendships which I formed — and the 
literary and social privileges which I enjoyed, without deep 
emotion. The remembrance of them has been the companion 
of my wanderings — the cause of excitement in a thousand 
joyous interviews — a stimulus to exertion in that which was 
manly and honorable — an aid in the hour of struggle — and 
comfort in moments of despondency. I never return hither, 
without those times and employments being before me, as if 
they were the existences of the present, and not the almost 
forgotten dreams of the past. 

Here, too, I caused to be educated those whom it is my 
natural duty to advise and protect. It was but twelve short 



months ago, at our last meeting, that those mingled with you, 
to listen to the counsels which the occasion might dictate, who 
constitute the all of manhood which I shall ever give to the 
cause of literature and liberty, morals and human happiness. 

For fifteen years too, it has been my official trust, as one of 
the guardians of this institution, to provide for the instruction 
of those who were committed to it; to watch over their 
morals and secure to them the lessons which should guide 
them in the paths of duty and usefulness. Approaching you 
under such circumstances, you will not expect me, nor shall 
I have either the power or the inclination, to trifle with 
matters of fancy or deal in flowers of rhetoric. 

But what shall be my theme ? Shall it be, the life of the 
educated man — the past, with its joys and its sorrows — the 
future with its solicitudes, its hopes and its duties? The 
pleasures, the obligations, and the appropriate results of literary 
and scientific acquirements? The character, history, and 
principles of education which have distinguished this semi- 
nary, to the benefit of our country and the cause of Christianity? 
These might be appropriate topics — but I have discussed them 
on former occasions. 

Shall I then speak of the human mind : its powers and 
capacities for improvement — their feebleness here, and their 
steady progress, under proper culture, until they reach the 
separating line, if such there be, which divides them from 
higher and holier intelligences ; — powers and capacities, which 
seem fitted to rise, by gradation after gradation, until they 
approach the archangel that inhabits near the throne of his 
Maker ? The contemplation would be salutary to the heart 
and to the head. But, ten years ago. when your societies 



first united for this annual festival, your predecessors invited 
me to lead the way, in those addresses which were intended 
to be made profitable to you; and I then offered to them 
the suggestions which I supposed useful on this absorbing 
theme. A different train of reflection, but not unconnected 
with it, is now forced upon me. I desire to address, not my 
elder but my younger brothers ; and to make to them a few 
suggestions upon a subject of abiding interest in their future 
•career — the importance of the study of the Bible, in forming 
the character of literary and scientific men, of scholars of 
every grade and every occupation — suggestions, which I 
hope, will not be inappropriate to the first literary exercise, in l 
this edifice, which has been reared from its ashes, for the wor- \ 
ship of the Author of that Book. 

Be not surprised, nor dissatisfied, my young friends, with 
this annunciation of my subject. I do not propose a full and 
labored argument upon it. Such an argument is quite too 
broad for an occasional address. Nor shall I solicit your 
attention to the holy and sacred nature of that Book, to its 
character and features as developing the depravity of our 
nature, and the retributions which await us, nor as exhibiting 
that "mystery of mysteries" the great atoning self-sacrifice 
for human guilt ; which constitute the beneficent purpose for 
which it was transmitted to us. You have elder brothers, 
here and elsewhere, whose commission it is to hold up these 
features before you ; and who may safely touch and sustain 
the ark of the covenant. My object is, to urge you to study it, 
for other, though inferior considerations* 

What are you? what is your situation? Students ; scholars ; 
with eminent advantages for acquiring beneficial knowledge— 



8 

bound by imperative obligation to acquire it, and thus render 
yourselves respected and happy, and practically useful to your 
less favored fellow men. This obligation you acknowledge 
— this duty you feel. To doubt that you thus acknowledge 
and feel, would be an insult to your understandings and a 
reproach to your hearts. May not the study of the Bible be 
made serviceable in enlarging the circle of your knowledge? 
— strengthening your powers ? — giving you safe principles of 
action? and fitting you successfully to serve the society in 
which your lot may be cast? Let us endeavor to find an 
answer to these questions: 

What is the Bible? It purports to be a communication 
from the all-knowing and eternal Mind of the universe. A 
record of our race — of our creation — powers — capacities and 
destiny. Its claims, in these respects, demand for it an earnest 
attention. Its origin, preservation and existence, at the present 
moment, is a standing, perpetual miracle. A great part of it 
was written more than three thousand two hundred years ago : 
and all of it, has been of nearly eighteen hundred years duration. 
For centuries the art of printing gave no aid in multiplying 
copies and preserving it. Yet from the time when its first 
pages were written, it has been handed down, from age to 
age, protected in its integrity and purity — undefaced, unmu- 
tilated and almost unaltered. And where are the writings 
of the nations, cotemporaneous with its origin ? of Assyria, 
and Chaldea, and Egypt? of all those which preceded Greece 
and Rome ? They perished with their authors, or were 
lost in the wasting of their nations. Where are the writings 
of Greece ? A part, and a part only remain. Of the four 
hundred works of Aristotle, one of the great masters of 



9 

Immaii reasoiiirig, and tiie merits of which would create a 
desire to save them, but about forty have reached us, and 
even of these, some are broken, and of others the genuineness 
is questioned. Not one-hundredth — perhaps not one-thou- 
sandth part, of the precious hterature of that land of poetry, 
eloquence and philosophy has escaped the wreck of her liberty 
and national existence. Rome was the successor — the imitator 
— the competitor — the survivor of Greece in literature 5 yet 
few of her works, which were her pride and her glory, survive. 
She was, for a long period, the keeper of the Book of the Cross, 
as she was of the literary productions of her citizens. Yet it 
remains and they have perished. The dramas of Livius 
Andronicus were the first regular compositions in Latin, of 
which we have any record. Where are they? Where are 
the works of Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius and others'? We 
retain a line of one of them — Laehis sum^ laudari ahs te^ 
pater^ laudato viro : of others there is little of any substantial 
value. W^here are the works of Cato, except his de re Rus~ 
tica 7 Of Varro ? Of all those, to whom Cicero in de Claris 
Oratorihus, refers ? Of some even of his own more perfect 
productions ? Where are the works on natural philosophy 
and the sister sciences, mathematics and geometry, which 
have been called the implements of natural philosophy ? They 
were in existence when tlie Origines of Cato were written, 
yet now Quae reliquiae? quodve vestigium ?■ 

Why the difference as to this book ? For many hundred 
years, copies were not multiplied and scattered, so that the 
ordinary causes of decay and destruction could not reach 
ihem. Yet the flames which have consumed palaces and 

2 



10 

cottages and libraries have left it unharmed. The eruptions 
of the volcano have not buried, and the more terrible devas- 
tations of the barbarian have not destroyed it. The siege, 
and sacking, and utter desolation of the capital, and the 
scattering to the utmost ends of the earth, of the nation to 
whom it was committed, defaced not one of its features. The 
temple was destroyed, but the laws written upon its tables, 
were not abrogated nor erased. The Cross is the essence and 
the emblem of the record ; and while all around the place 
where it was erected, utterly perished, that record, in all its 
perfectness, was protected. Whether it be true or not, that 
TOTTa NIKA was written, over that ensign, in letters of fire 
upon the heavens, and conducted the first Christian Emperor 
to victory, it is true that the doctrines of this book were 
planted by the throne, and extended wide as the empire, of 
the Cesars ; and yet when that empire fell and expired beneath 
the scourge of the northern hordes and the scimetar of the 
Mohammedan, this book with its text and its doctrines con- 
tinued to live ; its energies were renewed, and it is still the 
same as when Constantine became its advocate. It has 
passed through times of literary and moral darkness as well 
as light — of barbarism as well as civilization — through periods 
of enmity, as well as friendship, to its contents — and crossed 
that oblivious gulf which divides the modern from the 
ancient literary world, and where lies covered up, forever, so 
much of the literature and science of the nations. Other 
books have perished when there was no hostility to their 
doctrines ; this has survived when the arm of power was 
stretched out, and every human passion exerted for its de- 
struction. 



11 

It has survived too. with no essential aherations, and 
requiring, comparatively, few learned emendations of its text. 
Take into your estimate the magnitude of the work, and the 
multitude of the copies which curiosity and piety, through 
so long a period^ have made, and the changes in its words and 
expressions will be found so few as to create astonishment. 
It has been translated into the languages of all nations who 
have professed its religious faith — been subjected to Interjpola- 
tingCoiwinentaries — Talmuds and Parajphrases — Masoretic 
Punctuations — Critical Collections — Dissertations — Compi- 
lations — by the primitive Fathers — half pagan Christians — 
Catholics and sectarian Protestants — and yet its text has been 
rescued from them all. Its variae lectiones are less numerous 
than those of any other ancient work, which has been sub- 
jected to any thing like equal exposure. It has called for 
commentaries upon its meaning, and they may be piled 
volume upon volume, before human wisdom shall have 
searched out all its stores of knowledge. Filled, as it is, 
with modes of speech belonging to Asiatic languages ; with 
allusions to arts which are lost ; to nations which are extinct ; 
to customs gone by ; and treating of counsels which are 
not yet fully developed : humble piety united to all learning 
may continue to expend their force upon it ; but lohat was 
ivritten, remai?is written still; and 50 writte7i^ that all may 
read and understand it. You know that Egypt was learned 
and scientific. She v\^as so, while Greece was yet barbarian^ 
and Rome was without a name. But the denunciation was 
uttered against her — the Assyrian — the Persian — the Greek — 
the Roman — the Arabian — the Turk — came. Nation after 
nation has trodden her down, and we grope among her 



pyramids and her ruins for expositions of her knowledge and 
her rehgion. Her history, and hterature, and science, doubtless 
had their written evidences and records; yet what remains 
except that which is contained in the hieroglyphics upon her 
monuments and in her temples — and who can read and 
explain them? Who shall give us assurance that we shall 
ever be able fully to comprehend the knowledge which they 
contain and were intended to convey 7 They will probably 
never be read, so that all, even of the learned, shall agree in 
their language, much less in their meaning. 

This is true not only in regard to ancient writings, but to 
many which are not old. Shakspeare is not alone in this 
predicament. It is not yet two centuries and a half, since 
Romeo and Juliet, and Richard the second and third, (his first 
plays of whose date we have certain knowledge) were written, 
and yet, Warburton and Farmer, Hanmer and Rowe, Pope 
and Theobald, Upton and Grey, Stevens, and — more than all 
the rest — Johnson, have devoted years of labor to restore his 
text, and tell us what he did write. Why has it required 
comparatively so little labor to restore and preserve the purity 
of this volume, which is so much older and has encountered 
so much greater trials ? Why was it that the Jews to whom 
" the law and the prophets" were first committed, should have 
manifested such diligence, when it was transcribed or copied, 
that they even counted the number of letters and compared 
and recorded them? Why has it come down, through cen- 
turies, when all else has been subject to alteration and change 
and destruction? The only answer, which even infidelity 
can reasonably give, is to be found in the writing itself, and 
in the guardianship of its own all-powerful Author, who has 



13 

protected it by his providencCj and shielded it, by the terrible 
denunciation with which it closes, against him who shall add 
to, or take away from "■ the words of the prophecy" — " God 
shall take away his part out of the book of life." 

Have you no desire to become thoroughly conversant with 
so remarkable a work? To learn, by a study of its contents, 
why it should have been thus protected and preserved ? If 
some literary relic of an ancient genius were dug up from the 
ruins of Herculaneum or Pompeii, your curiosity would be 
excited, and you would labor at its pages with assiduity and 
zeal. Here is a Book, older and better preserved than any 
which the lava of Vesuvius or Etna ever entombed, and con- 
taining more and better learning than all the literature and 
philosophy of the ancient world combined. Will you not 
read, examine and study it ? 

Its writing and contents are worthy of its origin and history. 
The first part of it was written in Hebrew, the second in Greek, 
unless we except the book of Matthew, which was possibly 
written in Hebrew, and translated into Greek by himself or 
some other under his inspection. These languages were 
familiar to those who wrote, and those by whom it was to be 
first used. Its various portions are from the pens of about 
thirty individuals, living at dilFerent times, through a space of 
fourteen hundred years, and thus separated, in age, from each 
other. Yet the similarity of their language, style and idioms 
exhibits a literary phenomenon. The same similarity, on 
these points, does not exist, in the same number of writers, in 
any language, age, or country, varying only according to the 
subject matter which is treated. Test this assertion for your- 
selves, by comparing the passages which have reference to the 



u 

same subjects, or require the same mode of writing-. Yon 
will find the narrative of facts — the declaration of moral 
principles and rules of action — the exhibition of incidents 
which portray the feelings and excite sensibility — the devel- 
opements of religious faith and practice^ — ^the annunciations 
of the character, providence and government of God, from one 
end of that vast volume to the other, as if the same individual 
had spoken and written them. There are no such incongruities 
as the Koran contains, where the subhmest ideas and expres- 
sions are mingled with the lowest and most vulgar 5 sometimes, 
as the sceptical Gibbon remarks, crawling in the dust, and at 
other times, lost in the clouds. The Bible is, throughout, a 
consistent whole, in style and substance. From the simple, 
unadorned, yet sublime account of the creation ^'in the beo-in- 
ning," to the Revelation at Patmos, of that which shall be, 
we seem to find the same pen, the same intellect, the same 
heart. Was this accident ? Why did not the accident occur 
with other men, and in other lands ? The writers differed as 
widely as possible in station, employment and human learning : 
the favored foundling of the princess of Egypt — the old man 
of Uz — the poet of Israel — Solomon on his throne of glory — 
the seers of Judah and Jerusalem — the fishermen of Galilee — 
the pupil of Gamaliel — the disciple who lay on the neck of 
Jesus — why did all these think and write so much alike ? Do 
you not believe that you would be abundantly rewarded for 
the labor, which would enable you to answer this inquiry ? 

This labor will teach you another fact which may be useful 
to you. The writings of these men have been translated into 
your own language, by those who were familiar with the 
original tongues, and in the daily habit of using that portion 



15 

of ours, which is derived from others, yet they cautiously 
avoided words, phrases, and idioms, which were drawn from 
the pecuharities of other languages ; and their translation is 
a purer specimen of English or Anglo-Saxon, than any other 
book, written in their own day, or at any subsequent time. 
The copy which you now use has been approved, as the most 
accurate, by men of learning, of all sects and denominations, 
for two hundred and tvirenty-six years. It was made under 
judicious orders of the British monarch, James the first, in 
1607, by forty-seven able and learned scholars of Westminster, 
Oxford and Cambridge. They felt the absolutely sacred 
nature of the office conferred upon them, and neither " covet- 
ing the praise of expedition, nor fearing the reproach of slack- 
ness," gave us a faithful translation of the original, true to 
its spirit, and a standard of the purity and excellence of our 
own language. Numberless passages might be quoted to 
prove this assertion. I refer you to a single one. The Lord's 
prayer contains but three or four words which can be traced 
to any other than an Anglo-Saxon origin. 

The Bible is, in this respect, a literary curiosity, and a fit 
study, for you, as American scholars, who must use that lan- 
guage, to communicate to your fellow men, the knowledge 
which you may acquire. Every scholar should desire to 
understand and write his own language with purity and force. 
The tongue of every nation has its peculiarities, and is more- 
over suited to their general character, and to the current of 
ideas and modes of thought among the people. You may 
study the character of nations in the languages which they 
speak. It was so, in old time, with tlie Hebrew, the Greek 
and the Latin ; and it is so now, with the Italian and French, 



16 

the Spanish and English. And those have written and 
spoken, with most power to their countrymen; who have 
written and spoken their own language with most purity and 
propriety. This is a truth which you ought not to overlook 
m your aspirations for distinction, and your desire for useful- 
ness. Our xinglo-Saxon is plain, strong, beautifully simple, 
and admirably suited to the true character of the race, of 
which you form a part ; and the more purely you speak and 
write it, the more elhcient will you become as writers and 
speakers. Examples living and dead, support this remark. 
Swift, Hall, JNIarshali and Madison, will be read and admired, 
when the lengthened exotics, of many others shall have found 
their appropriate position^ as evidences of false taste and want 
of judgment. And if I may be permitted, without offence to 
aii}^, to suggest a comparison between hving scholars and 
orators, take Webster, distinguished among the senators of 
his own country : and Brougham, the first in genius and 
capacity in the British house of Lords. They are equals, 
perhaps, in the higher qualities of intellect, yet every sound 
scholar will give preference to the former, in the style and 
power with which his argument is exhibited. The difference, 
to a great extent, arises from the difference of their language. 
Webster is one of the purest Anglo-Saxon speakers with whom 
I am acquainted. His ideas are clear as light, to those whom 
he addresses, because they are presented with simplicity of 
words and phrases, and without the superfluous drapery 
which is borrowed from other languages. If you regard your 
own reputation as speakers, I cannot urge too strongly upon 
you, an early and diligent devotion to this characteristic of 
style. 3Iy own errors lead me to become your counsellor on 



17 

this point. But do not misunderstand me, and misconstrue 
my meaning in relation to it. I mean not to condemn the 
diligent study of the ancient languages, from which so many 
additions have been made to ours, nor the use of many words 
whose etymology runs back to them* I am not yet relieved 
from my prejudices in their favor, nor so very wise as to 
regard their study as waste of time. Your reading of the 
classical languages and writers ought to be thorough, both for 
the discipline of your judgment, taste and style, and for a 
correct understanding, not only of what is derived from them, 
but of the very structure and use of all language. 

The study of the Bible is an efficient means of acquiring 
correct language and style ; not studying it, to borrow its 
phrases, and profusely quote, on all occasions, its inimitable 
passages — a practice which savors little of good taste or reve- 
rential feeling — but studying it, to become imbued with its 
simplicity and force and elevation. Its unaffected narrative 
' — unadorned pathos — pointed invective — picturesque and 
graphic description — ^plain yet magnificent energy, cannot be 
thoroughly comprehended v/ithout appropriate effects upon 
your taste and judgment. Observe, for example, the preachers 
of the gospel. The manner in which its allurements are 
depicted — its admonitions uttered, and its threatenings de- 
nounced by them, will indicate to you the source from which 
they have derived their reasonings and illustrations — whether 
directly from the fountain of living truth, or the stagnant pools 
of human commentaries. They who have aided their style 
and modes of thought by diligent study of this work, if they 
do not rise to the first grade of excellence, never sink to 
inferiority. Observe, again^, two comparatively unlettered men; 

o 



18 

laborious in their employments and altogether without the 
adornments of literature. If one diligently reads the Bible, 
and becomes familiar with its language and expressions, and 
the other never opens it, you may tell the fact, by the supe- 
riority of the former, in his ordinary manner of conversation, 
even upon topics unconnected with the doctrines of the Book. 
The same fact is illustrated by two schools, in one of which 
it is sedulously taught, and in the other, is never read. You 
cannot converse with the scholars, without remarking the 
contrast. 

There is cause, I think, to rebuke those who have written 
and lectured on style and composition, that among the authors 
and books recommended, the Bible is so seldom pressed upon 
the consideration of the student. There is no one superior to 
it, in examples suited to correct and discipline the taste. 
There are no works of human genius containing finer pas- 
sages. Search the volumes of fiction, of poetry and eloquence, 
and produce the passages most justly admired, and their 
equals and superiors may be readily found in this work. 
Herodotus and Xenophon do not surpass it, in the simplicity 
and beauty of their narrative, nor Homer in the splendor and 
sublimity of his descriptions. Compare, for yourselves, the 
unornamented yet intensely sublime account which is given 
of the creation of the world and of man, in the commencement 
of the volume, with any and all the efibrts of pagan or christian 
writers. Compare the noblest pages in Homer, those in which 
he portrays the majesty and government of Jupiter, and his 
interference in the conflicts of contending armies, with the 
annunciation of the attributes of the Christian's God, by Job, 
Isaiah and their fellow penmen, and with the manifestations 



19 

of his power, at every step, as he led the Israehtes from bond- 
age to dominion. Compare the clouds and thunder and 
scales of Olympus, with the awful exhibition at Sinai, and the 
destruction of the enemies of his chosen people not only in 
their journeyings but at subsequent periods of their history. 
Make your comparison as extensive as you please, upon any 
and every subject embraced in it, and apply the most rigid 
rules of criticism, and you will come to the conclusion, that in 
correctness, energy, eloquence and dignity of composition, it 
is without a rival. Why, then, shall it be disregarded by the 
scholar who is ambitious of excellence in writing and speaking? 

You know that a notion has often prevailed, that it ought 
to be translated anew, and adapted to what is called modern 
refinement in style. I can perceive no great wisdom in this 
opinion. The experiments heretofore made have given little 
encouragement to renew the effort, and I trust none of you 
will be found aiding in its renewal. It results very much 
from overweening vanity in its authors, who have not yet 
proved that they are competent to correct the errors of the 
learned men, who gave it to us, as it is. And even if it 
were more defective, I would not subject it to the hazard of 
correction. It is venerable for its age, beautiful in its simpli- 
city, and masculine in its energy. And what is more than 
all this, British and American Christians — a very large and 
evangelizing part of the Christian world — have for centuries 
thought by its language, worshipped and communed with 
their Maker and their Saviour in its words and phraseology. 
It is profanation to disrobe it of its sanctity, and cruelty to 
deprive them of their accustomed medium of holy intercourse. 

The style of the Scriptures is admirable, and you have it, in 



20 

a language worthy of all acceptation ; a language, m which 
the great truths of the only true religion have been exhibited 
with a power as strong, and an eloquence as fervid, as in any 
other. And that language commends itself to your affections 
as the only one under heaven, in which legalized civil liberty 
has ever spoken among the children of men. Religion com- 
bined with liberty, founded upon and protected by written law, 
has, thus far, used it and it alone ; and in the progress of 
hum^an events, it does seem destined to carry them forward to 
the perfect emancipation of the human race ; when praise 
from the islands shall mingle with the anthems of the conti- 
nents, and v/hen mountain shall answer unto mountain, and 
echo back the rejoicings of freedom in the plains. 

But it is not alone for these reasons that I urge this study 
upon you. It will greatly enlarge your knowledge and guide 
you to the acquisition of that which is useful. No human 
work contains so much which it is important to know. There 
is a fund of real information in it which no man can estimate, 
who has not carefully examined it, page by page, compared 
it with what he has learned from other sources, and tried it 
by the established principles of science and evidence. You 
must not, however, expect to find in it, details of philosophy, 
and dissertations on the sciences. It was written with no 
such purpose. It does not deal in speculations and theories, 
nor in scientific demonstrations, but in facts, principles and 
doctrines; and the combination of these forms its system. 
They relate to, are connected with, and serve to establish and 
illustrate, Geology, Astronomy, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, 
Geography, History, and Chronology ; subjects of necessary 
and indispensable learning to the scholar : and you may rely 



21 

•without hesitation, on their accuracy and trnth. InfideUty 
and hostile religions have tried their powers in vain, to detect 
untruths, misrepresentations and mistakes. Their assaults 
have been most successfally repelled. The sneers of some, 
and the arguments of others, as to the age of the world, and 
the deluge ; and the malignant wit and ridicule of Shaftsbury 
and Yoltaire and Paine, against its facts and doctrines, 
have been triumphantly refuted by the very developements of 
science itself; the refutation is becoming, hour by hour, 
more complete and overwhelming : and if its language and 
contents be fairly dealt with, its character will not be dis- 
turbed, by any investigations of avowed enemies or doubting 
friends. 

Many of the assaults which have been made upon it, espe- 
cially those of recent date, profess to find countenance in 
geology ; — and want of caution in Christian Philosophers has 
given them currency. Discoveries in that science are sup- 
posed to have established facts inconsistent with the Mosaic 
account of the creation and the deluge. You will, to a 
greater or less extent, pursue the study of Geology here, and 
as you are engaged in the business of life. It is assuming a 
character of intense interest, in all the concerns of society, 
and will greatly promote the comfort and prosperity of man- 
kind ; but do not pervert it to their injury, by making it 
an instrument to unsettle a faith, more important to liberty 
and happiness, than all the acquisitions which science can 
ever make. Properly investigated it furnishes satisfactory 
evidence that the Christianas God made the earth as he spread 
out the heavens. It ought to lead you, step by step, to him, 
and to the acknowledgment of his creating energy. The 



22 

earth is a great laboratory; where not only a creating hut 
a sustaining power, and a skill equal to that power, have 
impressed and continue the immutable laws of matter. It 
furnishes to my mind an answer more potent than miracles,, 
to the atheist's crime and the sceptic's folly. Its teeming^ 
wonders ; its surface of mountain and of vale ; its oceans 
with their mighty depths, designed for the sustenance of 
animated nature ; the formation of its minerals ; the fires of 
the volcano ; the thousand chemical combinations which act 
upon its fluid as well as solid portions, and all fitted to accom- 
plish and carry forward the purposes of its formation, cannot 
be studied without enlarging your capacity for usefulness,, 
and giving you a better apprehension of his attributes who 
made them all. But let not your investigations become 
weapons to impugn the only account which has given you 
any light in regard to their creation. Be not wise beyond 
that which is written. The words of God, are a living and 
faithful commentary upon his works, to illustrate their mean- 
ing and enforce their truth. And the conscientious Christian 
should feel no dread of this or any other science,'nor any wish 
to arrest its progress. Investigation, directed to the earth, the 
air, the ocean or the heavens, can reveal no facts calculated 
to unsettle his faith. 

The argument which has been drawn from Geology amounts 
to this and nothing more. There are formations of earths, 
rocks and minerals, which by the ordinary process of additiony 
concretion and crystalization could not have been brought 
to their present state, within the period fixed by Moses for 
the creation, and therefore his account must be untrue. 
But is it not obvious that this ar2:ument is destitute of force, 



23 

unless they can establish three positions— tliat the writer of 
Genesis declares when the matter of the earth was formed 
— that the creation spoken of consisted solely of the formation 
of matter and of the principles which were to bring it into 
its present state — and that these principles have had one 
uniform action, as to time and place, from the beginning 
to the present hour, forever the same and forever acting 
with the same rapidity. Yet no one of these positions can 
they support by any light which genius or science has yet 
afforded. The Bible neither affirms nor denies them. Its 
object was, not so much, to give the history of matter, as of 
mind. Not so much to tell us when, as wliy the world was 
formed — to show its preparation and fitness for the temporary 
and probationary residence of undying spirits, and display, 
before us and all intelligences, the divine wisdom, power and 
beneficence. Hence we are only informed, that " In the be- 
ginning, God created the heavens and the earth ;" but we are 
not told when that beginning was, nor how long the earth was 
without form and void, darkness upon the face of the deep, 
and the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. 
When man was to be formed, he divided the light from the 
darkness — made the firmament — separated the dry land from 
the gathering together of the waters — commanded the earth to 
bring forth — fixed the lights of the sun and moon and stars to 
rule over the day and the night — filled the water and the land 
with animate and inanimate things, and then placed man 
upon it. But in what condition was it then? Will the 
unbeliever tell us ? Was it the same riidis indigestaque 
moles, as in the beginning ? Chaos and darkness had given 
place to order and light. Was the soil to be formed, through 



24 

a process of years ? The herbage was already ripe for the 
sustenance of the full grown animals which passed before 
Adam to receive their names, and the trees and flowers and 
fruits of the garden were ready for his enjoyment. And was 
the interior structure left unorganized ? Were there no ores 
in the mountains — no minerals to minister to human wants ? 
How did the descendants of Cain so speedily learn to handle 
the harp and the organ and become artificers in brass and 
h'on ? Or were a" part of these formed, and will they tell us 
which part it was, and which have been the result of the laws 
of nature since ? And if they cannot, shall their theories 
unsettle our faith ? We cannot justify to our own reason, a 
disbelief in the written record, until we are capable of demon- 
strating its falsehood. It should not be theorized away. God 
made ••' the ea?'th axd the icorldP The finishing of creation 
left all things, like man, perfect in their kind ; and it left, too, 
the principles of its existence, impressed on every atom of 
matter to sustain and preserve it. and to form it anew, when it 
should become necessary to carry on the purposes of its maker. 
He pronounced it all '•' very good' — adorned it with loveliness 
and hung it up, in its rich garniture, among the orbs which 
were to proclaim -' Glory to God in the highest." 

Do not, I entreat, read this book, to scorn or to doubt. 
True science will come to the aid of your belief Humboldt^ 
Werner, and others, and especially Cuvier in his theory of the 
earth, by an investigation of facts, and a sagacious induction 
from the known changes of the earth, the traditions of nations 
and the astronomical observations of the Chaldeans, Egyptians 
and Hindoos, have established the Mosaic account with a 
demonstration which leaves no ground of argument to the 



25 

adversary. And the balance is sustained, even by the princi- 
ples of legal evidence by which courts of justice decide upon 
our civil rights. Reason has been able to place the singular 
events by which the Almighty spoke, and the miracles which 
overpowered incredulity, on the ground of historical evidence, 
Pliilosophy yields to the examination, and Faith receives them 
with holy reverence. Scepticism is disarmed of rational sup- 
port. It has always been founded in ignorance or guilt. It 
has adjudged and condemned that which it never studied and 
comprehended. It seems to have forgotten, that truth must 
be learned by evidence ; that evidence demands reflection and 
study ; and that sober investigation, with honest purpose, is 
necessary to acquire and learn every thing which is valuable ; 
yet without these it has theorized on the profoundcst truths, 
and ended in doubt or confirmed unbelief. Voltaire, Hume, 
Paine, and the whole host, have committed errors in point of 
fact and sound reasoning, which would disgrace you at this 
early period of your scholarship. Scepticism has ahvays been 
impatient of study. It never investigated facts and funda- 
mental principles, and was never willing to understand the 
alphabet of the subject, on which it ventured its opposition. 
And hence its refutation has been complete. And why should 
it not ? Did God produce an imperfect work ? Would not 
omniscience make the true principles of science, -ipplicable 
to the workmanship of his own hands, consistent with and 
vindicators of that workmanship ? He has done so. And 
all his words stand unshaken as the hills which rest upon his 
power. 

Nay more, Flis book furnishes tests, by v/hich the truth of 
ancient writers may be tried, and they are to he credited or 

1 



26 

disbelieved, as they approach or recede from the narrations of 
this voUime. You may try Herodotus, Thucydides, Josephusj 
or any other, by this standard, in what relates to the same 
principles and the same events. It narrates and refers to a 
large proportion of the events of human societies, not only 
preceding and contemporaneous, but long subsequent to the 
times in which the writers lived. Its traditionary and inspired 
notices of the earliest condition and actions of mankind are 
the only record from which you can acquire a knowledge of 
them. In this respect it is an indispensable and invaluable 
work. You can find no substitute for it. Its subsequent 
details are more simple and sure than those of any and all 
other works united, and they are confirmed by the monuments 
of history, and by all that remains of the nations which they 
mention. You will find abundant illustrations of this in 
Shuckford, Prideaux, Adam Clarke's commentary, and other 
works which relate to the subject. Of their faithfulness and 
truth there are evidences in the traditions of many people — 
the remains of kingdoms and nations — and in every line of 
the recorded history of our race. There is a recent and 
beautiful confirmation of one short passage, which has here- 
tofore stood unsu stained, so far as I know, by any collateral 
testimony. In the 14th chapter of 1 Kings, ^e are told that 
in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam, Shishak, king 
of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and took away the 
treasures of the Lord's house and of the king's house, and all 
the shields of gold which Solomon had made. This was a 
thousand years before the final sacking of that city and the 
dispersion of its inhabitants. Of this invasion and plunderj 
there is no mention in profane history ; but now. twenty-eight 



27 

hundred years after the event, it is said to be verified by- 
satisfactory proof. ChampoUion, in searching among the 
ruins of Thebes, the seat of Shishak's power, found sculptured 
upon the walls of one of those magnificent temples built by 
him and dedicated to his gods, a triumphal ceremony, which 
represents him, as dragging the chiefs of thirty conquered 
nations to the feet of the idols whom he worshipped, and 
among them Jouhada Malek, king of Judah. The inscriptions 
upon the shield which he bears, show the land from which it 
came, and the portrait of the monarch, presents the same Jew- 
ish countenance, which, by a miracle running through forty 
centuries, has been preserved to the present hour. Time — the 
investigations of science — the changes of nations — are but 
instruments in the hands of the Author of that Book to 
vindicate its truth. 

Its prophecies are an important portion of the history, not 
only of Israel, but of the world. You will not study them, 
at this period of your lives, to find out that which is ^ret 
to come. Such a study, would demand subjugation of the 
passions, calmness and humility, enlarged knowledge and 
sound judgment, unsuited to your years. But that which 
relates to the past will afford you most useful information, and 
teach you powerful and abiding lessons. When they were 
delivered, they were anticipation and prediction of things 
improbable and incredible, but long since become facts. To 
you they are recorded history. Not one of them has failed. 
Their execution is nov/ written on the face of the fairest part 
of the earth, in letters of desolation. None can see them and 
disbelieve. Are not the guilty cities of theplain, still covered 
by the bitter waters of Asphaltites ? Is not Canaan still a curse 



28 

and Babylon a desolation, where tho Arab does not pitch his 
tent, nor the shepherd make his fold ? Is not Ismael still the 
terror of the mountain and the danger of the valley? Is 
there any more a prince in the land of Egypt? And are not 
the separate and contrasted destinies of Esau and Israel, de- 
monstration to every mind, that the spirit which foresaw and 
foretold both, was not of man ? Esau possessed the very 
fatness of the land ; his people were numerous ; his power 
great ; his cities strong ; his pride haughty ; yet in the midst 
of his glory, and when to human eye his strength was firm 
and his growth vigorous, the denunciation went forth from 
the mouth of the prophet. He had sinned, and '• shed the 
blood of Israel with the sword, in the time of their calamity 
and in the time when their iniquity had an end," and now, 
utter desolation covers his land and Esau is no more — a 
blasted monument of the precise truth of the prediction. The 
sword of the Almighty was bathed in heaven and came down 
upon Idumea and upon the people of his curse to judgment. 
The bow was bended and the arrows were not spared. The 
barrenness of El Ghor extends from the Elanitic Gulf to the 
Dead Sea. The Edom of the Edomites, is without an inhabi- 
tant. From generation to generation it has lain waste. Her 
nobles were called to the kingdom and none were there ; all 
her princes have been nothing, and there is not any remaining 
of the house of Esau. A young countryman of your own, 
who has recently followed the track of the Israelites, and 
traversed Idumea, was deeply impressed with the fulfilment 
of this prophecy, and its evidence of the truth of this volume. 
^- 1 would," he exclaims, " that the sceptic could stand as I did 
among the ruins of this city — among the rocks, and there 



29 

open the sacred Book, and read the words of the inspired 
penman, written when this desolate place was one of the 
greatest cities of the world. I see the scoff arrested — his 
cheek pale — his lip quivering— his heart quaking with fear, 
as the ruined city cries out to him in a voice loud and powerful 
as that of one risen from the dead. Though he would not 
believe Moses and the prophets, he believes the hand writing 
of God himself in the desolation and eternal ruin around him." 
How extraordinary has been the contrast with Israel. He 
too had sinned, and punishment was denounced against him ; 
but that punishment was coupled, not with his extinction but 
his preservation and eventual restoration to happiness and 
power. The promise was to Abraham and his seed, and that 
promise has been kept and will be kept. His descendants 
have been chastised but not consumed — dispersed among all 
the nations under heaven — yet, in every land, preserved a 
separate and distinct people. For nearly three thousand years 
of their history, they have been in bondage and dispersion, 
yet have preserved their religion, their language, their habits, 
and their customs — unmingled with others. They have been 
compared to the waters of the Rhone, which flow through 
without mixing with the waves of the intervening lake, until 
they discharge themselves in the ocean. Seven millions of 
them yet remain in the four quarters of the globe, trodden 
down by the gentiles, but awaiting their restoration ; and they 
will be trodden down, until the time of the gentiles be fulfilled; 
but as surely as Esau is extinct, Israel will be restored. The 
words of the prophecy will stand sure. They will yet awake 
from their slumbers and believe. An avenging God will then 
become a restoring Saviour, to a guilty but repentant people. 



30 

They will be gathered. The glory which departed, when 
the traofedy on (>alvary was enacted, will come again. Jeru- 
salem will be rebuilded. The house of Aaron will ao-ain 
mmister in her temole. The dark tresses of the dansfhters of 
Zion, which have hung mournfully in exile, will be wreathed 
again in beauty, and aathems and homage ascend from Moriah 
to the Great Deliverer. 

But it is not my purpose, to da^^ to urge, before you, the 
evidences and proofs, from prophecy and history, of the truth 
of the volume which I recommend for your study. But I bid 
you, fear not to examine the mass of facts, the concatenation 
of stupendous and minute events which it contains ; remem- 
bering, as I have before warned 3^ou. that its object was not 
to furnish systems of philosophy and science. Its design was 
to o;ive a true and crenuine account of the orio;in of our gflobe, 
and its inhabitants : of the source from which they sprung, 
and the principles of that superintending providence, which con- 
trols their progress and fixes their irreversible destination. In 
this respect it is an original work, having nothing which 
resembles it, in human learning. ?so pagan system or writing 
ever sugf^fcsted the idea of instructinof men in these momentous 
truths : of teaching them, that they were created and governed 
by one who had universal dominion, and of embracing purity 
of morals as an essential part of a religious code. But this 
work, begins and carries on the history of our race, in con- 
nexion with a religious system which does all this. And the 
story which it tells is compressed yet conspicuous — simple yet 
dignified — most general yet minute. It gives a particular ac- 
count of the peopling of the earth, the dispersion, settlement and 
divisions of the nations ; and then, selecting one people which 



31 

was to preserve the knowledge and worship of the Most High, 
gives its history, ahnost by the names of the individuals com- 
posing it and the common events in the actions of many of 
their lives ; while at the same time, by prophecy it foreshadows 
the destiny of many other nations. Yet in doing all this, it 
keeps unbroken the unity of the whole. Such a unity exists 
in no emanation of human intellect. All its lengthened narra- 
tion; its small and its great events; the secret actions of 
individuals, and the Convulsions and revolutions of kingdoms, 
are made to haVe reference to one object— one catastrophe — to 
an incident foretold for centuries — looked for by a large part 
t)f the pagan world, without understanding it ; an incident 
apparently unimportant in its nature, when considered sepa- 
rately, — the unjust sacrifice of a being in the form of man 
— yet mighty in the preparation for it and overwhelming 
in its consequences. Standing on a single point where this 
incident occurred, on a small hill in the territory of Judea, 
with this book as your telescope, you may look back, through 
more than four thousand years, through the history of the 
family of mankind, and see with distinct vision, human actions 
•and worldly events, pointing forward to, and influenced by, 
•the tragedy enacted on that spot ; and turning your eye to 
the future, you may behold the actions and events of near two 
thousand years which have since followed, bending backward 
to the same little point of time and space ; and you may follow 
'on, until, perhaps, two thousand other years shall have com- 
pleted the record of man's existence on earth, and it will still 
remain — and such it will be, through eternal ages, the central 
point of human hopes and human interests. Did unassisted 
human intellect form such a work? Did Moses, upon the 



32 

mountain nigh to Jordan, see that point of the promised laiid, 
and write his pentateuch in reference to it, without otiier aid 
than human tliought and human skili ? Did he alone devise 
the sacrifices and ceremonies which prefigured that event? 
And did David, Isaiah, and others, in strains which pagan and 
uninspired poetry has never equalled, foretell it because Moses 
had foreseen it? Did the sent One come and suffer, that he 
might save them from the scorn of error and imposition ? 
Let the infidel and the scoffer answer. Be it yours, my young 
friends, to avoid their extreme folly ; to study, with all the 
energies of your intellects, the wondrous Book and gather up 
its stores of knowledge. " The prophecy came not of old 
time, by the will of man." 

It will require no hasty reading or thoughtless examination. 
All your powers of sober thought and diligent industry will 
be demanded for the task. But those powers will not be 
weakened nor the afifections of your hearts debased by the 
exercise. It is a principle in the constitution of your nature 
that inaction of the heart and mind, renders both torpid and 
worthless ; while discipline, exertion, exercise on proper ob- 
jects, will invigorate all their faculties and lead them on to 
the highest elevation of happiness and honor — the devotion of 
your capacities to the purposes for which they were created : 
an elevation which as favored scholars you cannot fail to 
desire. A rigorous investigation of the authenticity and prin- 
ciples of this book, will discipline your powers — impart to 
you generous and lofty sentiments — high and controlling 
sense of duty — force of character to meet responsibilities, and 
firmness to encounter trials. And what affection or feeling of 
the heart is there, which will not find employment in the 



33 

study ? Do you seek an explanation of the nature, or illus- 
tration of any pure feeling — of filial duty and afl'ection — of 
conjugal or parental love — of sympathy and kindness — of 
strong enduring friendship — of attachment to country and her 
institutions — of any one emotion which is worthy of you as 
social and immortal beings — or of any corrupt and debasing 
practice which reason forbids you. to indulge ? It will be found 
there. 

I may not detain you by quotations to illustrate this truth ; 
but let me refer you to one or two examples. Your young 
hearts go out towards your country, and there is something 
dear to you in the words, ^^my native land^ Turn then to 
the exiles from Israel when they sat by the rivers of Babylon, 
and read the inimitable description. They remembered their 
country — recalled the songs of Zion — and said, " If I forget 
thee Oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning." 
Your ardent natures riot in the first impulses of friendship, 
whose essence is sympathy. Turn then to the visit to Bethany ; 
and while you read an illustration of power over the grave and 
its tenants, you will see an equal exhibition of sympathy and 
friendship. Remember who it was, and whence he came, 
who paid that visit. The heaven of heavens was his throne ; 
eternity his dwelling place. He sustained countless worlds 
by his power, and held the keys of death and hell in his 
hands ; and yet he forgot not the claims of human affection. 
He went on an errand of mercy and friendship to the dis- 
consolate and agonized whom he loved, but whose weakness 
could give no aid to him. And when he witnessed their suffer- 
ing, and saw his friend the victim of the destroyer, he, even 
he, " Jesus wept," and cried " Come forth," and was obeyed. 

5 



34 

Well might the believing and unbelieving Jews exclaim-^— 
" Behold how he loved him." This illustration of combined 
omnipotence and sympathy, is little less sublime than when 
the same omnipotence, by his command, "Let there be light" 
— scattered the darkness which covered the material world ; 
or when he prayed '^ Father forgive them, for they know not 
what they do," and pronounced — '■' It is finished y" thus closing 
the parallel between man's creation and man's redemption. 
How paltry by the side of such passages, is the oft quoted 
exhibition of human vanity. Quid times, Caesarem vehis, and 
a thousand others to which you are so often referred. ^^ Jesus 
wepf^ — ^'■Lazarus come forthP You can find no such pas- 
sages, in any other author." 

I might readily exhibit before you a multitude of other 
examples of sentiment and style, but I must hasten to another 
aspect of my subject. Knowledge, and the capacity to com- 
municate it in the most perfect manner, will avail little in 
establishing a desirable reputation as scholars, imless they are 
used to support those moral and social principles on which 
the happiness of yourselves and society depends. Knowledge, 
I admit, of every kind, even that of figures, is calculated to 
soften the mind, and tends to link man with his fellows, and 
of itself, therefore, ought to prevent the commission of crime. 
But, yet it is true, that it is not always beneficial, and that 
" high mental attainments are no adequate security against 
moral debasement." The Duke of Wharton ; Wilmot, Earl 
of Rochester; Villers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mirabeau, 
were in their days distinguished by wit, and taste, and learning, 
and knowledge; and they were not less distinguished by- 
extravagance, revelry, lawless passions and disregard of moral 



35 

aiid social virtue. High attainments are tremendous engines 
for the working out of good or evil. If not directed by correct 
and safe principles, they are " terrible weapons of ill." The 
educated rogue or infidel is but the more dangerous man. 

This truth is worthy of serious reflection at the present 
time. There is a tendency in the education of the age — it 
may almost be called its characteristic ^to overlook the im- 
portance, the indispensable necessity of laying correct social 
and moral principles at the foundation of all instruction. 
The object seems to be, to teach the scholar so that he may 
secure temporary success, and run, with the speed of the 
locomotive, the career of wealth and popular applause. The 
wonderful mechanical inventions of the day, and the entire 
revolutions which are taking place in the business and em- 
ployments of society, seem to have bewildered the common 
sense of mankind, and we are in danger of becoming not a 
moral and social, but a selfish and mechanical race. I do not 
regret, but rejoice in this progress, because I hope it will be 
made to subserve the permanent interests and happiness of 
men. But I do not desire to see the discoveries of Fulton and 
Arkwright and other inventors, exclude that instruction which 
rests on doctrines which are the essence of all safe knowledge, 
and are not merely of temporal but eternal duration. That 
education is the first object, and that secured, we may make 
them subservient to our pleasures, our interests, and all the 
high purposes of our creation. If you do not thus pursue the 
education which you have now commenced ; if you do not 
establish, for yourselves, principles founded in your nature and 
in the nature of the social state, and regulate your learning by 
them, you will be no blessings to your day and generation, but 



36 

may become madmeiij who will scatter firebrands, arrows and 
death, in seriousness and in sport : excite, as you pass along, 
the gaze of abhorrent wonder at your knowledsfe and acquire- 
ments, but bear the detestation of the wise and good, and leave 
behind you only melancholy monuments of the desolation 
you have wTought. 

But where will you find, that you may study, those princi- 
ples, which, as scholars, 3^ou may advocate, and carry out, in 
the actions of your lives J AYill you go to uninspired men, 
when you have in your hands the instructions of those who 
were taught by an infallible omniscience, those principles 
which are necessary for your guidance? Will you go to men, 
who. themselves, did not even understand, by whom they 
Vv'ere created : by whom governed, and to whom they had to 
answer .' To teachers of the ancient heathen Vv^orld ? To 
men of modern times, more blind than those of old, because 
they are incapable of seeing, when clearer hght surrounds 
them ? They were and are, without exception, ignorant of 
the very basis of moral and social principle — the relation of 
the creature to the creator ; without which the relation and 
duties of one creature to another can never be understood. 
And unless the principle be right, the action directed by it, 
will, generally, be wrong. You are not ignorant, how assuredly 
your conduct is regulated by your opinions. 

But if you are inclined to seek such teachers, go, and ask 
the wisest among them. Inquire of Epicurus. He will tell 
you, among other benighted errors, and as his essential doc- 
trine, that matter acts independently, and that there is no 
intelligent agent to create and to preserve in the wide universe 
of matter ; and if you believe him, you will eat and drink 



37 

to-day, with no higher aim, and to-morrow you will die ; and 
thus will end your miserable career on earth, among the 
beings, whose best and nablest interests it is your duty to serve 
and to promote. If there bs no intelligent power to create 
and to preserve, whence and how came that wondrous body 
of yours, and still more wondrous intellect ? Were they of 
chance ? Were the parts of your frame — the hand, the ear, 
the eye — its internal make and structure, all from accident, and 
that accident repeated through six thousand 3^ears, and in 
countless millions upon millions of mstances? Were your 
mental facuUies; your social propensities; your passions, 
whose active energy sets all your powers in motion, all of 
chance ? Did chance create this beauteous earth, with all its 
open and hidden glories : inipress on every atom of matter 
the eternal ]v.\v of its existence and its action, and make and 
sustain the nnghty worlds which fill all space and roll their 
endless round — "then indued is Chance a God, and ye may 
worship him.'"' But no, you and all that creation contains, 
are " fearfully and wonderfully made," by a fearful and won- 
derful Maker : and liis hw.'s, if you can discover them, 5^ou 
are bound to obey. It were wiser, with Sir }?'rancis Bacon, to 
believe eveiy fable in the Leo-end, the Talmud and the Alcoran, 
than that this universal imme is without a mind, whose glory 
the heavens declare, and whose voice is heard in every 
language under heaven. Epicurus cannot teach you. 

If not satisfied with him, go to the Academy where Plato 
taught, and ask him for instruction. He will, perhaps, hand 
you his Republic, which, like the Utopia of More, you will 
soon discover, is the mere delirium of philosophy, utterly vain 
for the regulatio.i of beings, with such interests and passions 



38 

as you and your fellows possess. Or perchance, he may 
undertake to instruct you in his one of the three hundred 
Grecian notions of the Chief Good, and will tell you that it 
consists in being like God. You ask him, what is being like 
God? He will answer, that it consists in a good habit of 
genius. And when you inquire, How shall we attain a good 
habit of genius ? with all his wisdom and knowledge he can 
only say. It is to be attained by Music, Arithmetic, Astronomy, 
and Geometry. And thus will end your inquiries, at this 
oracle of paganism. He borrowed, it is true, something from 
Moses ; for in his day the Jewish teachers mingled the doc- 
trines of Grecian philosophy with their purer religious faith ; 
and Grecian philosophers obtained some glimmerings of light 
from the law and the prophets : but he still remained ignorant 
of the only sure foundation on which a system of sound prin- 
ciples can rest. 

Will you go to other Grecian and Roman instructors ? Will 
you listen to Socrates, while he tells you that knowledge is 
the Chief Good which you ought to seek, but that you may 
practice idolatry, profaneness, impurity? Or Seneca, — that he 
does not know what duty is, and that you may destroy your 
own lives, to gratify your passions, or save mistaken honor ? 
Or Cicero, — while he admits that he is much less capable of 
telling what he did, than what he did not think ; recommends 
revenge as a duty, and honor as the only reward of virtue, 
and proposes to deify for worship his own daughter ? Or will 
you adopt the humiliating doctrines of Pythagoras, and believe 
in the metempsychosis, and that this anxious, restless, and 
aspiring spirit which is within you, at the hour of your disso- 
lution, passes, not to a disembodied and joyous or agonized 



39 

existence, but becomes the tenant of some bird, or beast, or 
reptile? This was, perhaps, no unnatural faith, to those who 
have not a futurity revealed to them. It prevailed widely in 
the ancient world, and is, at this moment, the settled belief of 
hundred of millions in Eastern Asia. And why should it not 
be, when they have no avenue to the future opened before 
them? Do not you, and did not they, feel, that this life 
cannot be man's only abiding place ? that this spirit cannot 
pass, upon the hasty and uncertain waves of time, to an 
eternal nothingness? That the restless, irrepressible, and 
unsatisfied leapings of the heart and the affections, after that 
which is higher and beyond all that surrounds us, demand 
that we should credit something which belongs not to the 
passing hour ? That ' all the economy of nature ; the beauty 
of the earth ; the brilliancy of the stars ; the glory of the lights 
of the day and the night ; the forms of human strength and 
loveliness, cannot be taken from us and pass forever from our 
sight and our enjoyment ? That there must be a continued — 
a prolonged existence ; where the eye shall see, the ear hear, 
beauty fade not, the affections of the heart be not blasted, and 
the glorious panoply of nature be spread out, forever V And 
how without a revelation could man be assured of these 
things? He was not. And in his gropings after the future, he 
adopted the belief, that this spirit did not die with his decaying 
body, but survived in an humbler and more degraded form. 
But can you submit to be taught by such teachers, while the 
volume before you offers the full splendors of an undying 
existence, which marches onward and onward, in the fruition 
of growing powers, and multiplying pleasures ? 

Will you then desert the ancient pagan teachers, and 



40 

wander to Confucius ? He >i\dll give you maxims of prudence 
and social regulations, but sanctioned only by convenience and 
necessity, and leaving: 3'cu and all vrliom he instructs in de- 
graded idolatry and atheism. The Chinese empire has adopted 
his creed: and it is a mixture of deism, or v/hat is falsely 
called natural religion, and the humiliating doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls. '•' The attributes of their faith are 
obscenity and blood." (Buchanan.) Will you search the 
Institutes of Alenu ? Their translator. Sir "William Jones, 
declares, that, with all their beauties, they have established 
only a system of despotism and priestcraft. 

Mohammed will give you a mixture of Judaism. Christian- 
ity and Paganism. He had 3'Ioses and the Prophets, Christ 
and his Apostles to enlighten him : and to them is he indebted 
for every excellence which the Koran cod tains. All beyond 
the larceny which he committed upon theni is the very fable 
and foolery of imposture ; a cheat, which the sword alone 
could have made prevalent. That sword, in a few short 
years, subdued to itself an empire wider than that of Rome, in 
her proudest hour, but in the degradation of his ■prosel5i;es 
you witness the issue of his impostures. 

If, despairing of success, among pagan and half enhghtened 
instructers, you turn to Christian teachers, you do well. The 
students of this Collegfe, who have preceded you, were directed 
to the principles vrhich they ought to adopt, and by which 
their conduct should be regulated, by the profound and elo- 
quent lectures of Witherspoon and Smith ; and you are 
required to study the dissertations of Paley. They were safe 
guides, for they sat at the feet of the great teacher, and learned 
their philosophy from him. But why will you rely upon 



41 

them, when every thing which they taught and which was 
not error, they derived directly from the book which is in 
your own hands, and no commentary can equal the shining 
light of the original ; nunquarn par sit, imitator auctorij — 
haec natiira est rei, setnper citra veritatem est similitudo. 
They did not, they could not, nor can you, form a safe system 
of moral and social principles, as a guide for conduct ; and no 
man without the aid of that book, has ever been able to form 
one. All the ancient philosophers failed and sunk into errors, 
and justified acts abhorrent to an enlightened conscience and 
sound judgment. And the infidel of modern times, is equally 
incompetent to the task • and adds to his folly, the deep ingra- 
titude of doubting, denying, scorning the teacher who gave 
him the lessons which he converts to weapons of ofience. 
He raises the withered arm against him who healed it. 
Whence does he derive the lights of modern civilization ; the 
morals, which enable him to escape from the debaucheries 
and errors and pollutions of pagan philosophy ? From the 
teachings of this Book alone. But for it, he would now have 
been a worshipper of the sun, of wooden images, or of reptiles ; 
and practising the abominations, which the wisest of ancient 
philosophers did practise. He partakes of the fruits of the 
promised land, but like the children of Anak in the valley of 
Eshcol, terrifies and drives far away those who seek to enjoy 
them. 

Do you imagine that you are competent to the task of 
forming a code for yourselves, without the aid of this volume 1 
Before you commit the vain folly of the experiment, enquire 
into the success of others — and take, for your example, the 
keenest intellect in the history of the human mind. Who 

6 



42 

shall he be ? Aristotle ? Who, and what was he ? " He lived 
about three hundred and fifty years before Christ — studied for 
twenty years with Plato, one of the best of heathen teachers — 
was for seven years the instructer of Alexander — and Philip, 
out of gratitude for his services, rebuilt Stagira, his birth-place. 
After the age of fifty, he taught for twelve years in the AT- 
KAion on the banks of the IJissus. Plato called him "the eye 
of the Academy" — Pope, the Columbus of the realms of wit — • , 
Cicero says, Jllud flumen orationis, aurevm fundens Aris-i 
totelis. For more than two thousand years, in some of the 
branches of human learning, he has not been excelled. Even 
yet, some of his works are regarded as almost infallible stan- 
dards of criticism, rhetoric and poetry; and his ethics and 
politics have been preached and read, on the Sabbath, in the 
churches of Germany." He wrote on almost every branch of 
literature and science, and no teacher ever exhibited a more 
acute and powerful intellect. Some of his principles are sound 
practical wisdom. He taught that the dignity of human nature 
consisted in the proper exercise of the moral and intellectual 
faculties — and its hitchest excellence in the constant habit of 
that exercise, guided by reason — and that our happiness 
depends chiefly on ourselves, and on the ivisdom and purity 
with which we form and act upon our pursuits. He too gave us 
the maxim '^iXos /xsv Sw^pocTTis, aXXa (piX-aTT] 73 oCKrtkioL. With such 
a teacher even you might envy his scholars, the Ilepi's-aTouvrs^, 
if you had not the teacher who was not born in Stagira but 
Bethlehem. Such, indeed, was his power in the investigations 
of science, that it has been almost profanely said, that he was 
^■'the forerunner of Jesus Christ, in the mysteries of nature, as 
John the Baptist was, in the mysteries of grace." It is certainly 



\ 



43 

true, that his works, and that of Euhemerus, historian of Mes- 
senia, who proved by monuments and records in the temples 
of the gods, in Greece and Arabia, that the generation of 
Olympus were but mortals deified by superstition— helped to 
prepare the way for the downfall of the sand built structure of 
heathen mythology. He lived in the most enlightened and 
free country of antiquity ; and was himself, the best scholar, the 
profoundest thinker, and the most acute investigator in that age 
and country. Yet there was a point, and it is that to which I 
am now soliciting your attention, on which he failed — and his 
failure ought to teach you a great moral lesson. When he 
attempted to philosophize on the existence and attributes of 
Deity, the nature of man and his destination, and the duties 
which result from these sources in our actions towards others ; 
he became bewildered and ambiguous, left no certain guide to 
the enquirer after truth, nor any clear exposition of his own 
views. His account of the Deity, was nothing more than this, 

Zcjov diSiov apjJTov — atfwfxaTov — to crpwrov xivouv ax/vyj-rov — dpyjj "koyou 

aWloL xa» a^x^ tuv ovtwv. Excellent, eternal — incorporeal — mover 
and immovable — principle of reason — cause and principle of 
all things. And in this blind description ended all his guesses. 
He needed a Revelation. He made indeed a great advance 
beyond the mythology of his time, but how infinitely did he 
fall below the conceptions of the God of the Bible, which are 
entertained by the humblest and most unlettered Christian. 
Instead of exhibiting him as the Creator of all worlds, govern- 
ing, guiding, and controlling all things, grand and minute, by 
a never ending and never resting providence — ^demanding 
adoration from all the works of his hands, and a strict account- 
ability for every action, by all the intelligent creation — he 



/ 




44 

joined nature with him as a part of his essence — and he him- 
self sunk to the worship of the thousand Gods of Greece, the 
personifications of human passions, and interests : — 

Gods, parlial, changeful, passionate, unjust, 
Whose attributes uere rage, revenge, and tust. 

Even his mighty intellect could not grasp the true conception, 
nor explain the multitude of personal and social duties which 
spring from it. And, my young friends, if Aristotle failed, 
can you hope to succeed ? If Socrates and Plato admitted 
their need and hope of a revelation, will you spurn that v/hich 
has been given to you ? Is it not wiser to receive with humble 
confidence^ the teachings which cannot err.* 

The study of this Book is required here as a part of your 
collegiate course, and you will find in it instructions for all 
the duties which you owe to each other — to society — to your 
country — to mankind: maxims for conduct and manners, 
incomparably more pointed, prudent and safe than Seneca, 
Rochefoucault. Chesterfield, and a hundred other such men 
have given or can give to 3'ou. There is no duty which yon 
cannot find written there ; no condition or difiiculty which it 
does not explain, and for which it does not furnish a solution. 

* It ought, perhaps, to have been here suggested, that this Institution, was 
the first, (so far as I am informed,) into wiiich the study of the Bible, as a 
college exercise, was introduced. A feiv years after I was graduated, I believe 
about the year 1813. the now aged and most venerable minister of the Gospel, 
the Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green, a few months after he became the President, 
adopted the plan of recitations on the Bible, on the Sabbath afternoon. They 
were, at first, confined to the senior class, the President himself presiding over 
the exercise, but were soon extended to the whole college. Dr. Hodge, 
professor in the Seminary at Princeton, Dr. Johns, of the Episcopal Church, 
with some others of high distinction, were then students here. 



45 

Its condensation and comprehensiveness place it in striking 
contrast with all other works. It would be pleasant to me to 
direct 3^our attention to various passages as illustrations of the 
character of the instrnctions; but I am admonished that an 
allusion to a single one must close my address. ;^: I refer you'to 
the twentieth chapter of Exodus, where in the space of about 
fifty short lines, there is a code of Law, more comprehensive, 
more just, more suited to the condition of all men, and better 
fitted to promote and secure their happiness than any other ever 
offered to them : a code which did not belong to the ritual or 
ceremonial law given to the Jews. That found its fulfilment in 
the sacrifice upon Calvary. This is of perpetual obligation, 
and rests upon us with all its original sanctions. You have 
read it again and again, and committed it to your memories, 
and heard commentaries upon its meaning. Have you exam- 
ined and reflected upon it, to see hov/ far it is perfect, when 
compared with the codes of other lawgivers ? of Numa, Solon, 
Lycurgus 1 Make the com.parison. You will find theirs 
defective, weak, unfitted to secure the happiness and prospe- 
rity of those on whom they were to act ; filled with evidence 
that their authors were men of like frailty with ourselves. 
With this you can find no such fault. You cannot alter it, 
add to it, or take away from it, without detracting from its 
value. And when you see it thus complete, ask yourselves, 
when, where, hy whom, and to tvhom it was promulgated ? 
About three thousand five hundred ^rears ago, in the most 
desolate region of Arabia Petrea, six hundred thousand men 
" from twenty years old and upward able to go forth to war,'^ 
besides women and children, amounting in all to probably 
much more than two millions of human beings of all ages 



46 

and descriptions, were assembled around the foot of a mountain. 
If we regard them, as unconnected with a holy dispensation, 
they were fugitive slaves, from a land where for nearly two 
centuries they and their fathers had been doomed to a dreadful 
servitude, and to the ignorance and debasement which a cruel 
tyranny imposed. They were fleeing through a wilderness 
which then as now could arlbrd no support for men or beasts : 
they were afflicted by hunger and thirst : vrith nothing 
before them, but nakedness, enemies and death : and they 
were ignorant, restless, impatient in disposition, without go- 
vernment or laws. AYhat code could be adapted to such a 
people ? What authority sufiicient to subject them to law, 
bind them to obedience, and guide them to virtue and happi- 
ness ? While there assembled, thunder and lightning and the 
sound of trumpets were upon the mountain, and the man who 
had assumed to be their leader pretended to receive this code 
of laws, immediately from the God whose terrors vv^ere before 
them, and delivered it to them, to bind and govern them 
and their descendants forever. And who was this leader who 
gave such a law, to such a multitude, under such circum- 
stances ? A man, who for forty years of his life, had been 
bred up amidst the debaucheries of the Egyptian court. He 
was not ignorant, for he had been instructed in all the learning 
which gave fame to the scliools of the Heliopolis of the ?sile, 
and attracted to them Herodotus and Flato and other philoso- 
phers ; but that instruction was calculated to imbue him with 
a superstition, which descending from the adoration of the 
heavenly bodies, had sunk to the lowest degradation, the 
worship of the reptfles of the Xile. A man, who had slain an 
Egyptian and fled from the vengeance of the laws ; — a man 



47 

\^?^ho for forty years morej in exile from his country had tended 
the flocks of a shepherd of Midian, — and when his crime was 
forgotten had returned to persuade the slaves of his lineage 
to rebeUion and desertion — rebellion against a power, the 
trophies of whose conquests had been borne from Northern 
Asia to the Indies and the Ganges — desertion, with a view to 
conquer and exterminate nations far more numerous, fierce 
and warlike than themselves, and take possession of a land of 
which they knew nothing but from rumor and tradition. It 
was indeed a land, which, if this book be true, had been 
promised to their great progenitor four hundred and thirty 
years before ; but this book was not then written to teach 
them that promise, and elevate their hopes of its fulfilment. 
Nor had that progenitor and his immediate descendants pos- 
sessed and ruled over it ; but for precisely one-half of that 
long period, like the pastoral Bedouins of more recent times, 
had wandered over and pitched their tents in certain portions 
of it, and for the last half they and their fathers had dwelt in 
Goshen, until their leader tempted them to this most hopeless, 
desperate of all human enterprises. And this leader, too, had 
no peculiar powers or genius for persuasion, for he was " not 
eloquent," but " slow of speech and slow of tongue," and had 
to depend upon another to be his mouth-piece before Pharaoh. 
Such was the age of the world ; such the multitude he led, 
and such the man who promulgated this law, if you deny that 
God was its author. Take its perfection, and all the attending 
circumstances, and no honest credulity can resist the convic- 
tion that a mightier than Moses spoke— a present, all-knowing, 
all-governing God. It were wiser to adopt the follies of the 
atheist, and attribute all things to chance, than to deny this 



48 

truth. It were as easy for such a man, to generate the matter 
of the universe and make a world; as to promulgate such a 
law, in such a mode, and bind not onl}' such a people, but the 
whole civilized race of men for thousands of years. 

Yet has all this been done. For forty years more, the last 
equal third part of that mean's life, he led that multitude 
through troubles and wars, distresses and afflictions which 
have no parallel in the history of mankind, and at last on the 
borders of the land where they were to practise this law, 
surrendered their government to another leader. And in that 
land, while the sanctions of this lavv'were regarded, the people 
were happy and glorious ; when those sanctions were spurned, 
ruin and dispersion were their allotment. 

This law is carried out in all its breadth and spirit, in 
in the sacred Scriptures. It has descended from the wilder- 
ness of Arabia, through all the changes of times and nations ; 
never for one moment deserting the land which it first 
governed, for portions of it are still read and taught by a 
wretched remnant, amidst the ruins of the cities of Palestine ; 
but it has passed from thence over oceans and continents; 
inhabited the cottage of the peasant, ascended the seats of 
power, and become the foundation of the codes of all Christian 
nations. Since the hour of its promulgation, Israel has risen 
to the greatness of fflor^^ which Solomon possessed, and been 
dispersed in every land, a proverb and astonishment. Nations 
have flourished and fled away like the mists of the morning, 
and their names are lost. Imperial cities, and the monuments 
of the great have crumbled and been swept away with the 
hearth-stones of the humble ; but Horeb still stands amidst the 
desolations of the wilderness, an evidence of the presence of 



49 

the Author of this law ; and this law has continued to roll on 
with undecaying power, in contempt of all the passions and 
philosophy and infidelity of men. Its principles are still found 
in accordance wilh our interests and happiness, and have 
their home in the inmost depths of the pure in heart. And 
they will continue to spread, until the islands, the oceans, and 
the continents obey ; and until non erit alia lex Romae, alia 
AtheniSj alia nunc^ alia post hac^ sed et omnes gentes, et omni 
tempore^ una lex, sempittirna et immortalis continehit. Of 
all men, American scholars, and you among them, ought not 
to be ignorant of any thing which this book contains. If 
Cicero could declare that the laws of the twelve tables were 
worth all the libraries of the Philosophers — if they were the 
cannen necessarium of the Roman youth, how laboriously^ 
niami nocturna diitrnaque ought you to investigate its con- 
tents, and inscribe them upon your hearts. You owe to them 
the blessed civil institutions under which you live, and the 
glorious freedom which you enjoy ; and if these are to be 
perpetuated, it can only be by a regard to those principles. 
Civil and religious liberty is more indebted to Luther and 
Calvin and their compeers of the Reformation, ^and to the 
Puritans and Protestants of England, and the Hugonots of 
France, than to any other men who ever lived in the annals 
of time. They led the way to that freedom and firmness, and 
independence of thought and investigation, and the adoption ' 
of these principles, as the guide in social government, as well 
as private actions, which created a personal self-respect and 
firmness in its defence, which conducted us to'a sense of equal 
rights and privileges, and eventually to the adoption of free 
written constitutions as the limitation of power. Be you 

7 



60 

imitators of them. Make your scholarship subservient to the 
support of the same unchanging principles. They are as 
necessary now as they ever were, to the salvation of your 
country and all that is dear to your hopes. The world is 
yet to be proselyted to them. Religion and liberty must ^o 
hand in hand, or America cannot be established ; the bondage 
of the European man broken ; Africa enlightened and Asia 
regenerated. And even here, we are not without peril. Look 
abroad ; are not the pillars of our edifice shaken ? Is not law 
disregarded ? Are not moral and social principles weakened ? 
Are not the wretched advocates of infidehty busy? The sun 
has indeed risen upon our mountain tops, but it has not yet 
scattered the damps and the darkness of the valleys. The 
passions are roused and misled. Ancient institutions are 
scorned. Our refuge is in the firm purpose of educated and 
moral men. Draw then your rules of action from the only 
safe authority. Hang your banner on their outer wall. Stand 
by them in trial and in triumph. Dare to maintain them in 
every position and in every vicissitude ; and make your appeal 
to the source from which they are drawn. And then come 
what may, contempt or fame, you cannot fall; and your pro- 
gress, at every step, will be greeted by the benedictions of the 
wise and good -^ALVETE— SAL VETE. 



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